Tomorrow, when the
cleaners move into the Sandton Centre in Johannesburg, the United Nations will
claim that something has been rescued from the wreckage of the earth summit.
Governments may not have delivered, but big business has. The world's biggest
corporations, with the UN's blessing, have negotiated a series of "partnership
agreements" - voluntary commitments obliging those companies to respect the
environment and defend human rights - which will be recorded as official
outcomes of the summit. These, they claim, will show that international law is
not required to force corporations to respect human rights and the environment.
Governments appear to agree, which may be one reason why they have seemed so
relaxed about the survival of the planet: why legislate if the world can be
saved by promises?

But just as the chief executives congratulate each other, a new report
suggests that the partnership agreements are worthless. The company most clearly
associated with "corporate social responsibility", which has launched one of the
new partnerships and sponsored some of the key events at the summit, appears to
be saying one thing and doing just the opposite.

In a survey conducted by the Financial Times, BP was named as the firm which
commands the most public respect for its environmental record. The energy
company claims to run its operations according to a set of strict "business
policies", which have enabled it to become "a power for good in the world". BP,
the policies state, will "respect the rule of law", defend "basic human rights
and fundamental freedoms", "be held accountable for our actions" and "will not
choose business partners to do things on our behalf that contravene these
commitments". As an example of good practice, the company cites, in its
statement on environmental and social reporting, the "major stakeholder
consultation exercises" carried out in preparation for the Baku-Tblisi-Ceyhan
oil pipeline project.

Last week, an international coalition of environmental and human rights
groups published the results of their fact-finding missions along the route of
this pipeline. Their report suggests that, far from being a model of good
practice, BP's showcase project breaks both the commitments BP has published and
the promises business leaders have made in Johannesburg. Their findings imply
that those who imagine we can rely on trust to save the world are deceiving
themselves.

The pipeline, the construction of which is due to begin in December, runs
from the Caspian Sea, through Azerbaijan, Georgia and Turkey to the
Mediterranean. It will carry one million barrels of crude oil a day. One of the
most important energy projects on earth, it will reinforce Turkey's position as
a key strategic ally of the west. The 1,000 kilometres of pipeline running
through Turkey will be built by the Turkish company Botas, on behalf of a
consortium of oil firms led by BP.

Botas, which is responsible for the "major stakeholder consultation
exercises" of which BP has boasted, claims to have distributed information "to
all stakeholders" in the project, and to have consulted most of the villages
along the route of the pipeline and nearly everyone else who might be affected
by its construction. These assertions, the fact-finding mission to Turkey
suggests, are untrue.

The mission visited eight of the villages Botas claims to have consulted.
Four of them, it discovered, had not been contacted at all. In the mission's
report there is a photograph of the village of Hagibayram, which Botas says it
"consulted by telephone". The houses are little more than piles of rubble: the
entire village was deserted years ago. It has no telephones.

The consultations which did take place appear to have been designed to
manufacture consent. The people Botas visited were asked what they felt the
benefits of the pipeline might be, but were not questioned about the potential
costs. Botas brought in "university professors", who told the villagers,
incorrectly, that there were no safety or environmental risks associated with
the project. The questionnaire noted that the pipeline is a Turkish government
project "of high economic and strategic importance" to the country. The people
who live along the route (some of whom are Kurds) are likely to have interpreted
this as a coded warning that they speak out at their peril. Even the
fact-finding mission was stopped and questioned by police.

Though the construction of the pipeline will destroy homes, fields and roads
and damage many people's livelihoods, only a minority of those it affects are
likely to receive compensation. Most of the land along the route is either not
officially registered, or is held in the name of dead people. BP's partner has
told the villagers that it will compensate only those whose names are on the
official register. No compensation at all has been offered to the fishing
communities affected by the construction of the tanker port at the end of the
line.

Violations of this kind have been common practice in the oil industry for
years, but what is new and astonishing about BP's project is the contract struck
between the oil companies and the government of Turkey, a copy of which the
fact-finding mission has obtained. The contract suggests that, far from being a
model project led by an "accountable" corporation, the Baku-Ceyhan pipeline sets
new standards for corporate impunity and domination. The pipeline's "host
government agreement" effectively grants the corporations executive power over
the government.

The contract overrides all Turkish laws except the constitution. It insulates
the oil companies from any change in either Turkish law or international law:
if, for example, new taxes or new environmental or health and safety rules are
introduced, the agreement takes priority. In effect, it forces Turkey to flout
international law in order to protect the consortium. BP appears to be legally
exempt from paying compensation to anyone affected by oil spills or other
impacts of the pipeline project. Turkey has promised that its security forces
will defend the consortium from "civil disturbances", but neither the government
nor the companies are obliged by the agreement to respect human rights. BP may
terminate the contract at any time. Turkey may not.

What BP and its partners have done, in other words, is to negotiate a
contract which has the same effect as the multilateral agreement on investment,
the charter for corporate rights drawn up in secret by governments and
corporations five years ago, but dropped when it caused an international outcry.
The company which has promoted itself in Johannesburg as the exemplar of
corporate responsibility, which has promised to respect the rule of law and "be
held accountable" for its actions, has exempted itself from effective democratic
control.

If BP - by common consent the most environmentally and socially responsible
of all big companies - is prepared to play by these rules, it is hard to see why
we should believe any of the promises made by big business in Johannesburg.
Corporations will take what they can: when there is a conflict between
profitability and the environment or human rights, the profits come first.
Voluntary agreements, this case suggests, simply do not work. Big business will
protect human rights and the environment only when it is forced to do so.